Convergent
by XxXJustaWriterXxX
Summary: Tobias has suffered from nightmares and insomnia since the day Tris died over two years ago. Despite this, he pushes on because of the promise he made to her. A new girl moves into the apartment next to his and suddenly, the nightmares are worse than ever. Why is this girl so familiar to him even though she says they have never met?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Okay so this is just a random idea I had a while ago, like right after reading Allegiant and I've wanted to write it out. I don't know if it's good or not, but try to withhold on tearing up my fragile self esteem. Let me know if I should continue!**

Screams. They surrounded me every night in my head. They were her screams, even though I know she would never scream. I also know she would hate that these dreams haunted me, dreams of her being weak and begging for mercy. No, Tris Prior would never beg for mercy, maybe if she had she would still be here.

I sat up abruptly from yet another restless night. It had been more than two years since she left me forever, and more than two years since I had soundly slept. The nightmares before her death were infrequent and not even worth remembering. A bullet shot ringing through the darkness after I pulled the trigger only to realize I had become a true murderer. Nothing a soldier in a war doesn't have nightmares about.

After Tris was gone my nightmares got worse. For the short six months she was present in my life she was always there. I didn't truly realize how hard it would be to live without her until it was too late.

When I look to the clock on my right, I'm glad to see that it is already 6:54. That's not too outrageously early for me to wake up. When I stood up I noticed the little bottle of pills my mom had given me that were sitting next to my clock. "To help with your sleep deprivation," she had said with a slight smile. I wanted to be angry that she knew about it, but she had that look of worry in her eye that I remember seeing whenever she saw Dad's belt marks on my back. I had only taken the pills once, and even though I had blacked out, I didn't count that as sleep. The nightmares were horrible, but not feeling anything was much worse.

Showering and getting dressed went by quickly as usual, leaving me time to read before I had to go to work. I was speaking at a random inner-city elementary school this morning about the power of words over physical action or something, that wasn't until eleven though.

At around half past nine I heard a crash in the hallway and went out to investigate. There was a box on its side, its contents spread around a petite blonde's feet. My heart jumped a little as I observed her from the back. She has the same stature and hair color as Tris did, minus the part where her hair reached all the way down to her hips. The early morning sunshine bounced off of the blonde strands, giving her an almost ethereal quality. The girl was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and dark blue jeans. She was muttering some rather profane words as she crouched down to collect the items on the floor.

"Did you uh need some help?" I asked, rubbing the back of my neck nervously. Despite my previous confidence about almost everything I did in life, confidence always seems like a façade nowadays.

"Yeah I definitely wouldn't mind," she chuckled out as she turned her face to me.

I froze midstride, her face, the face that has been haunting my dreams since the day she was the first to hit the net. Her slightly rounded chin, barely existent eyebrows, somehow appearing hard and soft at the same time. Her eyes were not the same though, which deflated my spirits. Instead of the grayish blue I remembered, they were an almost emerald green. The different eye color made me realize, I had held her cold dead hand. I had seen her neck covered with dark crusted blood, a bullet wound straight through the right side. Her torso was also covered with blood, as were multiple other parts of her body. She was long gone by the time I got to her, making it impossible for the young lady in front of me to be my Tris.

"Uh are you going to just stand there?" She questioned with a slight head tilt. Her deep green eyes betraying the face that looked so much like Tris's.

"Sorry, I just thought I knew you for a second there."

"Oh," she paused for a moment, looking at my face. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"How did you-"

"No one freezes like that unless they're remembering something terrible. Anyways, I'm Alex I'm moving in down the hall." Her small hand gestured to the vacant room to my right. I looked at the little fingers, identical to the ones which had been intertwined with my own so long ago.

"Uh cool, I'm Tobias Eaton." I rubbed my hands together and decided to squat down to assist her in cleanup.

Now, however, she was the frozen one. She looked at me a little bit confused, "I know that name," she murmured.

"I'm a big public speaker," I suggested, hoping she would not remember me from the war. Hoping I was not the one responsible for slaughtering her baby brother or something along the lines of that.

"I guess that has to be it," Alex shook her head a bit and went back to putting her knickknacks in the box.

We worked in silence for another minute, and then she stood up with the refilled box back in her arms. The box was at least twice her width, she had to have quite a bit of upper body strength to be able to carry it. Then again, she had already dropped it once.

"Do you want me to carry that?" I inquired in a monotone voice, not knowing whether or not it would offend her.

She chewed her bottom lip, such a Tris-like habit that my heart stuttered again. "Well I don't want to it to end up on the floor again I guess." She said as she handed me her load.

The box wasn't extremely heavy, but I was a good two feet taller than her with the build of an athlete. We walked down the hall to her apartment in silence. When we reached the door she momentarily fumbled with her keys, and I remembered a night with a very similar girl.

_"Hurry up Tris," I whispered with fake urgency, "You don't want the warden to catch us."_

_ She giggled quietly, dropping the key to the storeroom we were about to enter. There wasn't a lot of privacy around here, and you took what you could get. If it meant you had to take a janitors keys so you could make out in a broom closet, so be it. I scooped up the keys and unlocked the door in one swift motion. _

_"Showoff," she muttered under her breath._

_"What was that? I don't really have to break the rules for you, you know I could-"Tris cut off my sentence with a kiss and pulled me into the small room by my shirt. _

_"This is a war Tobias." Tris whispered later that night, her small head tucked against my shoulder. We were propped up against a plain brick wall, relishing in the silence for once. _

_"I know," I said solemnly. _

_"What happens if- if one of us doesn't make it out?" She asks with a shiver. _

_"That could never happen," I shook my head, squeezing her hand as I did so. _

_"But what if," she murmured with her face almost completely buried in my shirt. _

_"If by some crazy accident, one of us was to lose the other, then that person would have to go on. I wouldn't want you to suffer anymore I'd want you to," I paused, "Move on I guess."_

_"What makes you think I would be the one who was alone?" Her face had reemerged, and her eyes were twinkling in the dim light. _

_"Because I would never let anything happen to you."_

"You can just put the box over by those shelves," Alex pointed to an empty set of wooden shelves. I cleared my mind of recently surfaced memory, dwelling on the past would never help me.

"I'm sorry but I don't really have anything to offer you right now." She was definitely right about that, the apartment had less furniture than mine, and I lived light.

"I guess I should probably get going, uh welcome to the neighborhood Alex." I said the name with trouble, it just did not feel right to me.

"Nice to meet you Tobias," she smiled, her smile was identical to Tris's, I could not bear to look at it.

"Yeah you too." I quickly walked out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Sorry for those people who followed and were waiting! I didn't see a lot of enthusiasm for this story so I wasn't really sure if I should write another chapter, but we'll see how it goes I guess. If it helps, I did finish this chapter six days ago but there have been upload issues. Let me know what you think!**

I avoided her for weeks after that, two weeks and three days to be precise. I felt rude to ignore her, but I couldn't stand to look at her. The easy part was not seeing her face to face, she and I had completely different schedules. She left at 7 and got back at 5, I left whenever and got back at 6 or 7 at the earliest. Seeing her in my nightmares was a whole different problem. Now when Tris was begging and pleading, her eyes were emerald green and she was begging me to remember her. They had to be related, there was absolutely no possible way that two people could look so frustratingly similar and not be long lost twins. One thing I knew I had to do to find out, talk to her, as much as I dreaded the thought of doing so.

So on the 18th day after I helped her move her box I knocked on her apartment door. She opened it almost instantly, which I figured she probably would, her apartment was the size of a closet.

"Oh hey Tobias, decided you wanted to be friends after all?" She gave a slight half smile but her heart wasn't in it.

"I didn't mean to ignore you I just-"

"It's ok save it, I understand. I didn't try to talk to you either, I wasn't really sure if you were ok." She bit her lip in that same Tris-like gesture again, I winced.

"Why would you think that?"

"I know it has to be painful if I look so much like her. I know what it's like to lose something." I notice her slight emphasis on the word _thing._

"No I'm good I promise." We looked at each other for another awkward second, then she invited me in.

Her apartment had changed in the last couple of weeks. The walls were still an olive green, just like mine. I'm not even sure if we're allowed to paint, though my lease agreement is pretty loose. She had a small beige couch set up in the middle of the room with an even smaller dark brown coffee table sitting in front of it. In the right corner of the room, there was a little desk and matching chair. The desk has papers stacked and scattered all over it. The shelf where I had set the box next to is now filled to capacity, books on two shelves and random objects on the third. There aren't any posters on any of the walls, and the doorway to her tiny bedroom was firmly shut. The kitchen connected to the main room had only one appliance, a coffeemaker.

"I still don't have much, wasn't expecting company, I have some crackers though if you want." She bit her lip again and I struggled to repress the memories.

"Oh it's ok, maybe we could just uh talk?" It's been so long since I tried to just talk to someone outside of my immediate friend group, I forgot how awkward it can be.

"Sure," she gestured to the small couch and we sit down, each of us occupying a cushion.

"So," she said, "Where are you from?"

"Here."

"You were born here?" Her eyes widened a little, "Most of the Testies left." She covered her mouth with her hand, Testies was a slang word used for all of the members of the Chicago Project, better than Stiff any day.

"It's ok it's just a word," I laughed a little, "I was born right in this very city, didn't know there was anything else until a couple of years ago."

"Wow that seems like a pretty limited existence, no offense. What faction were you in?"

I was a bit surprised by the fact that she knew about factions, the talk of those mostly disappeared with the other Testies. "Abnegation turned Dauntless. Why do you ask?"

"I'm a historian for the Bureau, or more of a scribe I guess. I find accounts of all of the things that are easily accounted for, and I write it up in textbooks for the new schools." Chills went up my spine at the word Bureau, Tris had saved us all from their corruption, but I have never regained my trust in them. They are basically the government, running many of the operations like the schools and the post offices, too much power for people like them.

"Well that's interesting, I'm sure you know a lot more about the Project than I do. Where are you from?"

She frowns slightly, "I was born in the Bureau branch right outside of here actually. Not that I remember any of it, that rebel made sure we would all forget." She sighed softly. I wasn't sure if I was mad or if I felt sorry. I rarely considered the impact Tris's decision had on normal people like Alex. She was just minding her business, maybe not even old enough to actually work there. Which made me wonder about why she was born there, did they allow that sort of thing?

"So are there a lot of children at the Bureau?" I tried to ask it casually as not to offend her, but a certain sadness clouded her face.

"From what I understand I was the only one. I think I must've had a really lonely childhood. You see, my father runs the Bureau and I was sort of illegitimate and my mom had me and ran. She was an assistant, all I ever had was David."

Now I took a minute to study her face, to really study it. I didn't see that evil twisted man in her beautiful face, the face that belongs to Tris. Basically everyone knows that I hate David, and though almost everyone knows it, hardly anyone knows why. Only my closest friends and my mother know who David really is, the cold blooded murderer who stole Tris from me. She notices me staring and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Sorry, I don't want to bore you. Tell me about life inside the gate."

I internally sighed, but entertained her with stories of changing factions, the factionless, the Dauntless test, things that Testies have known since they were in diapers. When I talked about the tattoos that were so common amongst Dauntless members, she paused for a split second. Her eyes clouded over minutely, and her hands that were pulling threads at her sweater started to shake. I stopped talking, and she was back to normal. She urged me to continue the story, not mentioning the small outbreak at all.

"I really should head out, I uh have a big speech to give tomorrow…" I trailed off sort of aimlessly.

"Oh yeah, they're opening that new school aren't they?"

I nodded slightly, tomorrow a new school was opening relatively close to our apartments. It wasn't unusual, they were opening at a rather rapid pace considering none existed at all as of two years ago. None that focused on the new curriculum where they taught us legitimate history instead of what was formulated for the Testies.

"Well then I may see you there, I'm actually going to be a guest for the ceremony, record it and all." She looks down and her cheeks color ever so slightly. I don't really understand why speaking of her job would embarrass her; but I suppose I'll find out all about it tomorrow.


End file.
